Research into senescence (lack therof).

Why is it that their seems to be so little research being done in the field of senescence? It would seem that huge amounts of resources would be dedicated to the field, since everybody gets old and dies. And yet we have had lots of progress made in other fields, but no practical gains on how to extend the human lifespan. As far as I’m aware, the only finding on how to do so is to restrict calorie intake to maybe 1400 to 1500 calories per day, and even then you are adding maybe 10 or 20 years. I understand that the fundamentals of the area are complex, and deal with such things as telomeres and other genetic switches that control protein expression. What puzzles me is not so much the actual science, but that their seems to be such little work being done in this area compared to others. Theirs all sorts of money being raised and spent on things like HIV/AIDS, breast cancer, and even diseases that are much rarer, such as muscular dystrophy (Jerry’s kids). Yet this problem of getting old, which is the ultimate underlying problem in things like heart disease, strokes, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, and numerous other diseased, gets very little attention, with the focus being on the complications rather than the underlying issue (getting old). Why is that?

The more complex and wide-ranging an area of research is, the more difficult it is to leverage an expected payoff from a miracle drug into the research funds needed to discover that drug.

There’s always been lots of opposition from religious organizations into this kind of research. The argument generally being that without aging people won’t feel despair in the face of death, and without despair there won’t be faith, and faith is the only good, therefore anything that provides hope for life in this world is a sin. Pretty much every book I’ve read on the subject of life extension has included the comments of some priest about how terrible it would be for people to not die.

This is complete fiction. Please provide a cite to back it up.

Do you have any actual figures on the amounts being spent on various branches of research? I have none, but I can say that my father’s first job, in 1965, was to harvest sea anenomaes from the beaches of La Jolla and give them to a professor at UCSD, who was using their DNA for studies on extending longevity. So somebody was researching the topic back then and I’m sure many people are today. If one doesn’t hear about it there may two reasons. First, it may be that the research simply hasn’t been successful. Second, the mass media coverage of science does not give a good picture of what’s actually going on in the scientific community.

This is flat-out wrong. Senescence/aging is a HUGE area of research.

A simple search of current NIH research grants for “Senescence” and “Aging” yields 450 hits.

I, too, would like to see a cite for this. But it seems you are confusing [literal] immortality with senescence, which is just “aging”.

As for the OP, I’d like to see what data you are seeing that makes you think there is a lack of research into this subject.

It isn’t just disease, it is pension and productivity. Many wealthy OECD nations are facing an upside down pyramid of aging populations. Soon in wealthy nations as well as in many less wealthy nations nearly 20-40% of the population will be retired or disabled due to age related diseases and unable to work. That will leave the able bodied generaton to support a massive aged population and their own kids at the same time.

So there is also the incentive to address the issue from a basic economic standpoint. We keep extending lifespan, but if people can’t work the last 20-30 years of their life they can’t contribute anymore.

Why isn’t it as ‘sexy’ as studying AIDS, cancer, or cardiovascular disease? I don’t know. But it should be. Aging is behind most of our expensive chronic diseases. Very few people get CVD, osteoperosis, dementia, osteoarthritis, diabetes or cancer in their 30s.

I second this.

There’s the National Institute on Aging. Lately, funding percentiles have been super competitive for this agency because there’s so much good research out there.

Cancer, heart disease, etc. are age-related diseases and lots of people that work on those diseases, also focus on senescence.

Of course there is research into senescence. The population of Western countries is aging pretty rapidly and that creates a lot of interest. I also think it’s kind of simplistic to say aging is “the ultimate underlying problem” behind all those other conditions.